The ethereal figures of Sandro Botticelli's (1445-1510) Primavera float not only in museums but also in our daily lives. We see Venus, Flora, and the Three Graces printed on objects ranging from notebook covers to clothing items, transformed into familiar icons of a Renaissance aesthetic that seems to transcend time. Behind the familiarity of these images, however, lies an equal profusion of academic debates seeking to decipher Botticelli's works and their meanings for his 15th-century Florentine contemporaries.

A fundamental starting point for the change in how Art History began to approach works like Primavera can be found in the work of Aby Warburg (1866-1929). His 1892 doctoral thesis, Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Spring: An Investigation into the Conceptions of Antiquity in the Early Italian Renaissance, was more than just a study of two paintings; it laid the groundwork for an investigative program focused on the Nachleben der Antike – the afterlife of Antiquity in subsequent cultures, especially in the Italian Renaissance. This program would materialize in the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg, now the Warburg Institute in London.

By analyzing Primavera and The Birth of Venus, Warburg laid the foundations of his comparative method, seeking to understand which aspects of antiquity were of particular interest to Quattrocento artists (WARBURG, 2015). His specific contribution, delineated through the correlation he made between contemporary poetics – through the texts of Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494), especially Giostra and Rusticus – and the images produced within the context of the Medici family, was one of the ways in which the Renaissance appropriated pagan Antiquity. Thus, by finding a social substrate for the relationships expressed between text and image, Warburg posited that the representation of dynamic accessories – flowing hair, wind-blown garments – was not a mere decorative flourish, but a deliberate way to intensify the vitality and emotional content of the figures based on ancient references revived by humanism.

In other works, Warburg would deepen the correlations of the arts with other fields of culture, in order to inventory the very ways in which such respective dimensions were distributed in the Renaissance. Countering a certain aestheticism that often disregarded symbolism, he turned to the importance that patrons and artists attributed to pagan themes. In this way, Warburg intuited that the recourse to ancient mythology in the Renaissance frequently involved a dive into deeper layers of meaning, linked to philosophy, astrology, and magic. The interdisciplinary approach and the valorization of less evident currents of Renaissance thought, cultivated in the environment of the Warburg Institute, would resonate in the work of subsequent scholars. Among them, Ernst H. Gombrich (1909-2001), a prominent figure and director of the Institute from 1959 to 1976, dedicated himself to the analysis of the work, firstly in an article titled 'Botticelli’s Mythologies,' in which he postulated seeking a "more strictly historical interpretation" (GOMBRICH, 1945).

His methodological contribution lies in the formalization of the idea of an intellectual program elaborated by a humanist for the artist. Focusing on Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) as the "spiritual mentor" of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, Gombrich argued that the painting should be understood in light of Ficinian Neoplatonism. He proposed the figure of Venus-Humanitas as the central theme, a Venus who symbolized not only love and beauty but also a moral and intellectual virtue capable of elevating the human spirit. This interpretation established the Neoplatonic framework as a fundamental interpretative key for deciphering Primavera, emphasizing its philosophical content.

Although one of his fiercest critics, it is along the same Neoplatonic path that we can add Edgar Wind (1900-1971), Warburg's assistant and deputy director of the Institute from 1934 to 1939, to this genealogy of readings of Primavera. In Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (1958), Wind proposed an examination of the philosophical allegories he believed were encoded in Renaissance art for a circle of initiates. His interpretation of Primavera focused on how the painting visualized specific doctrines, such as the dialectic of love in the group of Zephyrus, Chloris, and Flora, where Beauty (Pulchritudo) emerges from the harmonious union of opposites.

Wind reinforced the idea of Primavera as a work of particular interest, where each element served to articulate philosophical arguments derived from classical and Ficinian sources. By highlighting the notion of "pagan mysteries" veiled in mythological forms, he underscored the esoteric nature present in a considerable part of Renaissance culture, contributing to the perception that Botticelli's paintings could contain layers of meaning that transcended the merely decorative or narrative.

It is upon this foundation, built from Warburg's investigations and the Neoplatonism-focused readings of Gombrich and Wind, that Frances A. Yates (1899-1981) develops her interpretation of Primavera. Associated with the Warburg Institute from 1938 until her death, Yates developed a strong emphasis on the magical and Hermetic dimensions of Renaissance thought, areas hitherto little addressed by historiography. In her work Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964), she offers a particular perspective on understanding the function of art in Ficino's circle.

Anchored in the centrality of Florentine Neoplatonism and focusing on the third book of his work De vita libri tres, titled De vita coelitus comparanda (On Obtaining Life from the Heavens), by Ficino, her analysis dwells on this medical treatise, entirely permeated by astral magic. In it, Ficino details the construction of talismans – images, objects, and other devices – under specific astrological configurations, aiming to attract and channel the beneficial influences of the planets and stars to promote health, well-being, etc. The world posited in Ficino's treatise is organized as a living agent, like the Hermetic treatises, also translated by him in the second half of the 15th century, and is pervaded by the spiritus mundi, the vehicle of astral qualities. Talismans, correctly made with materials, colors, forms, and images in sympathy with a particular star, could attract and concentrate this planetary spiritus.

For Yates, Botticelli's Primavera, with its enchanted atmosphere and the prominence of Venus, fitted perfectly into this context. She proposed that the painting was not merely an allegory of the philosophical Venus-Humanitas, but a "predominantly Venusian image, reflecting Ficino's type of magic" (YATES, 2007). The function of Botticelli's "Alma Venus," according to Yates, would be analogous to that of a talisman: "to attract the Venereal spirit from the star and transmit it to the bearer or observer of its lovely image" (YATES, 2007). To support this reading, Yates, in addition to incorporating other pagan texts recovered by humanists, anchored herself in the social relations between Botticelli and Ficino through the figure of Lorenzo de' Medici.

This interpretation cast new light on each element of the painting. The central figure of Venus would not only be allegorical but the focus of a magical operation. The Three Graces, in their harmonious dance, could represent the distribution of these beneficial influences. The group of Zephyrus, Chloris, and Flora, symbolizing the transformation and fecundity brought by spring, would reinforce the generative and vitalizing power of the image, especially under the aegis of Venus. The profusion of meticulously depicted flowers and plants, many of which had specific astrological and medicinal associations in the Renaissance pharmacopoeia, would also contribute to the work's talismanic efficacy.

In this way, Yates carried forward a series of Warburg's assumptions about "Platonic-magical practices," providing the textual and conceptual basis for understanding how a work of art could also have been conceived with an operative function. By shifting the interpretative focus from representation to function and efficacy, she opened a new paradigm for the study of Renaissance art. Her reading does not invalidate the allegorical or philosophical layers but integrates them into a more comprehensive understanding, where art is not seen through the lens of familiarity we feel before this image, thereby reconfiguring our understanding of the very nature of art and thought in the Renaissance.

Although less widespread, Yates's reading, which, as it appears in her 1964 book, does not quite formalize itself as yet another interpretation of Primavera, possesses the virtue of the generosity of defamiliarization. Instead of reducing the painting to a simple magical object, her perspective enriches it, revealing it as a culturally dense artifact where aesthetic beauty, philosophical depth, and magical intention are inextricably intertwined. She reminds us that, for Florentine humanists, the universe was a field of subtle forces and that art could be a means of harmonizing human beings with the cosmos. Botticelli's Primavera, in this light, emerges not only as an icon of Renaissance aesthetics but as a portal to a re-enchanted worldview, where the image possessed the power to influence reality. Yates's legacy, therefore, is to invite us to listen more attentively to the sources of the past, to explore with intellectual independence the less obvious dimensions of cultural history, and to recognize the complexity of the motivations and beliefs that animated artistic creation in other times.

Lucas Augusto Pietra

Universidade Federal de São Paulo

May 30, 2025

GOMBRICH, E. H. Botticelli’s Mythologies: A Study in Neoplatonic Symbolism of His Circle. Journal of Warburg and Courtland Institutes, Vol. 8, pp. 7-60, 1945.

WARBURG, Aby. O Nascimento da Vênus e a Primavera de Sandro Botticelli. Uma investigação sobre as concepções de Antiguidade no início do Renascimento italiano. In: Histórias de Fantasma para Gente Grande: Escritos, Esboços e Conferências. Trad. Lenin Bicudo Bárbara. São Paulo, Companhia das Letras, 2015.

WIND, Edgar. Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958.

YATES, Frances (1964). Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. London: Routledge, 2007.